Sometime in the period of dizzying self-awareness of all that stepping into responsibility might mean and all the swirling feelings of growth and possibility and shame and the desire to belong in this complicated world.
Sometime in that indeterminate moment of being a youngster, a youth…Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah the priest… Jeremiah, who grew up in the little village of Anatoth, an hour walk from Jerusalem… this Jeremiah – heard the voice he would hear again and again in the coming decades of tumult and heartbreak.
The word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah and God had something to say: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart, I made you a prophet to the nations.”
The story of God’s call on our lives begins not with a task or an objective or a to-do list or even an appointment – but God’s call begins with God meeting us and reminding us that God has been with us from the beginning.
God has been with us holding and forming and shaping who we might become. The hymn-writer of Psalm 71 praises the faithfulness of God as they look back from the vantage point of old age. The Psalmist portrays God as a deliverer and as midwife: “For you O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb.” (v. 5-6)
Jeremiah – as the son of a priest – surely would have been familiar with these types of promises of God’s nearness and protection. But when God tells Jeremiah that God has appointed him to be a prophet to the nations – objections arise, fears emerge.
This is a common pattern in call stories in the Bible: God calls out to a person – the person raises inadequacies and barriers to their participation and God responds with a reassurance of God’s presence. Jeremiah knows the story of God calling out to Moses through the burning bush and Moses responding, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
Hearing his own call from God to be a prophet to the nations, Jeremiah’s inadequacies flood to the surface of mind, “Ah, God… I don’t know how to speak because I’m only a child!”
On the surface, this is a good objection because speaking is a key role of the prophet. Prophets speak truth to power, prophets are visionary poets of worlds still to come, word-weavers of hope and slingers of barbs that disturb.
On the surface, youthful Jeremiah raises a fair objection – because he is not yet well versed in the nuance of the Middle Eastern geopolitics, he is not a seasoned diplomat acquainted with all the pressures the tiny nation of Judah is subjected to, jammed in between Egypt and Babylon, the superpowers of its day.
On the surface – Jeremiah does not have the gravitas or stamina or wit or eloquence to hold crowds captive or sway the opinion of powerful leaders.
But God replies to Jeremiah – that it doesn’t matter that he’s only a soft-spoken teenager – because God will send him where he must go and God will tell him what he must say. This calling to be a prophet to the nations does not hinge on Jeremiah’s age or ability but on God’s peculiar power to mysteriously work through Jeremiah.
God responds to Jeremiah’s initial reply of inability – but more than that God addresses a below-the-surface fear that Jeremiah didn’t name: “Don’t be afraid of them, because I’m with you… I’m with you to rescue you,” declares God.
Jeremiah had not mentioned or named fear keeping him from the call to being a prophet.1 Yet God nevertheless reassures him, “Don’t be afraid, because I am with you.”
Not many of us may be called to the four decades of boldy prophecy that Jeremiah undertook, appointed by God over nations and empires “to dig up and pull down, to destroy and demolish, to build and to plant.”
Not many of us may be called to a lifetime of earthy political street theater like Jeremiah: who once wore an oxen’s yoke as a warning of impending servitude … or another time went shopping at a potter’s studio – only to smash the pot he bought… or another time embarked on a long journey to bury his linen underwear only to return and dig them back up later as a sign of the utter uselessness of the people… or when he found himself imprisoned as the Babylonian army laid siege to Jerusalem – of all the things he could do – he bought a farm – as a sign of the bold promise of God’s future restoration.
Yet we, too like Jeremiah – have callings set before us from God that are deep and hope-filled and difficult and heartbreaking. And we, like the teenage Jeremiah – might also have objections to participating in the work that God is doing in the world through us.
I’m too young and don’t know how to speak up. I have no problem with talking, but have no idea what it means to listen to God. I’m right in the middle of my life and tied up with all sorts of responsibilities. I’m older and don’t see myself as useful as I once was. I’m a procrastinator and am too chaotic to be present to God’s call. I’m a type A planner and God’s business is hard to work into my calendar.
There are all sorts of very good objections you might raise when God speaks to you or when you feel a nudge from the Spirit. But all of those objections reflect more about our own deeper, seldom-named fears, than they do about God’s ability to work through us.
“I’m only a child, and I don’t know how to speak,” said Jeremiah.
Yet God met Jeremiah with the reminder of God’s presence from the very beginning, and the promise that God would always be present no matter what fears arose. So too, does God continue to call us and give us confidence that God’s presence is more powerful even our spoken objections and our unnamed fears.
God continues to reach out with a hand that appoints us to the holy and hard and beautiful work of truth-telling and healing and prophecy and peacemaking. God continues to speak to us even when we are afraid to say something with our lives. God’s word to us continues to be one of deliverance and reassuring presence. “Don’t be afraid of them, for I am with you, to rescue you,” says God to us.
What is your objection to the work of God set before you?
What is the deeper fear that lurks beneath the surface of your life and how might God’s overcome that fear?
How is God continuing to speak reassurance to you, reaching out to empower you, and appointing you to be a prophet of truth and love, even today?
- Elmer A. Martens, Jeremiah, Believers Church Bible Commentary, (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1986), 35. ↩︎